With schools shut across the world, millions of children have had to adapt to new types of learning.The COVID-19 has resulted in schools shut all across the world. Globally, over 1.2 billion children are out of the classroom.As a result, education has changed dramatically, with the distinctive rise of e-learning, whereby teaching is undertaken remotely and on digital platforms.Research suggests that online learning has been shown to increase retention of information, and take less time, meaning the changes coronavirus have caused might be here to stay.While countries are at different points in their COVID-19 infection rates, worldwide there are currently more than 1.2 billion children in 186 countries affected by school closures due to the pandemic. In Denmark, children up to the age of 11 are returning to nurseries and schools after initially closing on 12 March, but in South Korea students are responding to roll calls from their teachers online.With this sudden shift away from the classroom in many parts of the globe, some are wondering whether the adoption of online learning will continue to persist post-pandemic, and how such a shift would impact the worldwide education marketEven before COVID-19, there was already high growth and adoption in education technology, with global edtech investments reaching US$18.66 billion in 2019 and the overall market for online education projected to reach $350 Billion by 2025. Whether it is language apps, virtual tutoring, video conferencing tools, or online learning software, there has been a significant surge in usage since COVID-19.How is the education sector responding to COVID-19?In response to significant demand, many online learning platforms are offering free access to their services, including platforms like BYJU’S, a Bangalore-based educational technology and online tutoring firm founded in 2011, which is now the world’s most highly valued edtech company. Since announcing free live classes on its Think and Learn app, BYJU’s has seen a 200% increase in the number of new students using its product, according to Mrinal Mohit, the company's Chief Operating Officer.Tencent classroom, meanwhile, has been used extensively since mid-February after the Chinese government instructed a quarter of a billion full-time students to resume their studies through online platforms. This resulted in the largest “online movement” in the history of education with approximately 730,000, or 81% of K-12 students, attending classes via the Tencent K-12 Online School in Wuhan.Other companies are bolstering capabilities to provide a one-stop shop for teachers and students. For example, Lark, a Singapore-based collaboration suite initially developed by ByteDance as an internal tool to meet its own exponential growth, began offering teachers and students unlimited video conferencing time, auto-translation capabilities, real-time co-editing of project work, and smart calendar scheduling, amongst other features. To do so quickly and in a time of crisis, Lark ramped up its global server infrastructure and engineering capabilities to ensure reliable connectivity.Alibaba’s distance learning solution, DingTalk, had to prepare for a similar influx: “To support large-scale remote work, the platform tapped Alibaba Cloud to deploy more than 100,000 new cloud servers in just two hours last month – setting a new record for rapid capacity expansion,” according to DingTalk CEO, Chen Hang.Some school districts are forming unique partnerships, like the one between The Los Angeles Unified School District and PBS SoCal/KCET to offer local educational broadcasts, with separate channels focused on different ages, and a range of digital options. Media organizations such as the BBC are also powering virtual learning; Bitesize Daily, launched on 20 April, is offering 14 weeks of curriculum-based learning for kids across the UK with celebrities like Manchester City footballer Sergio Aguero teaching some of the contentWhat does this mean for the future of learning?While some believe that the unplanned and rapid move to online learning – with no training, insufficient bandwidth, and little preparation – will result in a poor user experience that is unconducive to sustained growth, others believe that a new hybrid model of education will emerge, with significant benefits. “I believe that the integration of information technology in education will be further accelerated and that online education will eventually become an integral component of school education,“ says Wang Tao, Vice President of Tencent Cloud and Vice President of Tencent Education.There have already been successful transitions amongst many universities. For example, Zhejiang University managed to get more than 5,000 courses online just two weeks into the transition using “DingTalk ZJU”. The Imperial College London started offering a course on the science of coronavirus, which is now the most enrolled class launched in 2020 on Coursera.Many are already touting the benefits: Dr Amjad, a Professor at The University of Jordan who has been using Lark to teach his students says, “It has changed the way of teaching. It enables me to reach out to my students more efficiently and effectively through chat groups, video meetings, voting and also document sharing, especially during this pandemic. My students also find it is easier to communicate on Lark. I will stick to Lark even after coronavirus, I believe traditional offline learning and e-learning can go hand by hand."The challenges of online learningThere are, however, challenges to overcome. Some students without reliable internet access and/or technology struggle to participate in digital learning; this gap is seen across countries and between income brackets within countries. For example, whilst 95% of students in Switzerland, Norway, and Austria have a computer to use for their schoolwork, only 34% in Indonesia do, according to OECD data.In the US, there is a significant gap between those from privileged and disadvantaged backgrounds: whilst virtually all 15-year-olds from a privileged background said they had a computer to work on, nearly 25% of those from disadvantaged backgrounds did not. While some schools and governments have been providing digital equipment to students in need, such as in New South Wales, Australia, many are still concerned that the pandemic will widenthe digital divide.Is learning online as effective?For those who do have access to the right technology, there is evidence that learning online can be more effective in a number of ways. Some research shows that on average, students retain 25-60% more material when learning online compared to only 8-10% in a classroom. This is mostly due to the students being able to learn faster online; e-learning requires 40-60% less time to learn than in a traditional classroom setting because students can learn at their own pace, going back and re-reading, skipping, or accelerating through concepts as they choose.Nevertheless, the effectiveness of online learning varies amongst age groups. The general consensus on children, especially younger ones, is that a structured environment is required, because kids are more easily distracted. To get the full benefit of online learning, there needs to be a concerted effort to provide this structure and go beyond replicating a physical class/lecture through video capabilities, instead, using a range of collaboration tools and engagement methods that promote “inclusion, personalization and intelligence”, according to Dowson Tong, Senior Executive Vice President of Tencent and President of its Cloud and Smart Industries Group.Since studies have shown that children extensively use their senses to learn, making learning fun and effective through use of technology is crucial, according to BYJU's Mrinal Mohit. “Over a period, we have observed that clever integration of games has demonstrated higher engagement and increased motivation towards learning especially among younger students, making them truly fall in love with learning”, he says.A changing education imperativeIt is clear that this pandemic has utterly disrupted an education system that many assert was already losing its relevance. In his book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, scholar Yuval Noah Harari outlines how schools continue to focus on traditional academic skills and rote learning, rather than on skills such as critical thinking and adaptability, which will be more important for success in the future. Could the move to online learning be the catalyst to create a new, more effective method of educating students? While some worry that the hasty nature of the transition online may have hindered this goal, others plan to make e-learning part of their ‘new normal’ after experiencing the benefits first-hand.The importance of disseminating knowledge is highlighted through COVID-19Major world events are often an inflection point for rapid innovation – a clear example is the rise of e-commerce post-SARS. While we have yet to see whether this will apply to e-learning post-COVID-19, it is one of the few sectors where investment has not dried up. What has been made clear through this pandemic is the importance of disseminating knowledge across borders, companies, and all parts of society. If online learning technology can play a role here, it is incumbent upon all of us to explore its full potential.COVID-19 And The Mainstreaming Of Virtual ClassroomsThe Role Of Virtual Classrooms During The COVID-19 PandemicVirtual classrooms and distance learning, as alternate technology-driven learning methods, have been growing at a reasonable pace. Virtual classrooms have been specifically in use by all sectors, including primary and higher education as well as corporate learning. The increasing popularity of social and microlearning strategies, fostered by general social media platforms like YouTube and Twitter, and major educational technology disruptions like edX, have added to the increasing acceptance of virtual modes of learning. It is expected that the predominant use of virtual classrooms would increase by a whopping 16.2% compounded annual growth rate by 2023 [1]. Nevertheless, virtual classrooms have not yet been considered as a serious alternative or substitute for the contemporary face-to-face (F2F) learning.Things have started to look different, however, in the wake of the current, novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, since the entire world is under lockdown. It is the time of the year when academic and teaching activities are in full swing in most parts of the world. The current pandemic situation has paved the way for a ground test of virtual classrooms as a prominent tool of learning in the current times. Schools, colleges, universities, corporates, and even world bodies and multilateral organizations like the UNO, WHO, and G20 have had to switch to the lesser-used virtual mode of learning and communications. These emergent circumstances stand as a conducive test for companies offering virtual classroom platforms and services like Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Cisco, Microsoft, etc. The test parameters are varied, some predominant ones being bandwidth management, network traffic, server response time, and a number of concurrent users. (Not to mention that Microsoft Teams evidently went down for a brief period due to an exceptionally high concurrent usage of the collaborative platform recently [2].)Distance LearningDistance learning has been an integral part of the learning system in higher education institutions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The case of universities in Saudi Arabia is interesting; despite distance education being a mandated element for all institutions, the use of virtual classroom functions has been almost negligible. This is the case with all the traditional universities. However, there is a university dedicated to a mix of online and F2F learning that has been relying on the online learning system. Apart from this, there is certainly a trend of using Learning Management Systems that offer multiple options for the instructors to support their classroom teaching with online quizzes, assignments, lecture notes, etc. The primary deployment of virtual classroom functions has been in scenarios where male teachers must teach female students. Many universities have been implementing it across the country for a while through interactive television (ITV). Evidently, this set up has been running smoothly and effectively, with few exceptions that may occur even in F2F classes.One of the authors of this article co-investigated the satisfaction of female students in Saudi universities with the ITV classes (Hoda, et al., 2018) [3]. The researchers used Biner’s Telecourse Evaluation Questionnaire (TEQ) to measure the satisfaction on four main facets of distance learning: course management, instructor, technology, and overall. The respondents gave an average rating on all the parameters. The results pointed to the areas that should be improved for an enhanced learning experience. The target sample was limited in many ways, such as skewed gender and age distribution as well as the degree of education. Since the current situation has forced the usage of virtual learning uniformly, it is now the right time to measure the students’ experience with virtual classes at a much higher scale and from different levels in order to provide a seamless learning experience. The experience is fresh, and the engagement has been very intense. The education sector should use the opportunity to understand the existing loopholes and strategize the inclusion of virtual learning in their existing learning system. Undoubtedly, the current pandemic has led to the testing of a variety of online systems on a grand scale, including education. The results should, therefore, help the development of more efficient services in a wide variety of sectors with education services at the forefront.